


we're able to be just you and me (within these walls)

by MoonlightBreeze



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [11]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Couch Cuddles, Eliot Spencer Angst, Eliot and Parker and Hardison have the 'kids talk', Episode: s04e06 The Carnival Job, Eventual Fluff, FebuWhump2021, Getting Together, Hanging Out, Light Angst, Multi, OT3, Parker Being Parker (Leverage), Past Violence, Queerplatonic Relationships, References to Sex, Scars, Short & Sweet, Talking, a tiny reference to the abuse Parker went through in the foster care system, as in there's one mention of sex but it isn't explicit, i have no idea what to tag this, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonlightBreeze/pseuds/MoonlightBreeze
Summary: After the events of the Carnival Job, Hardison & Parker talk to Eliot about kids, and it leads to something Eliot never would have expected.Febuwhump Day 11 - alternate prompt, "Please come back"Warnings for mentions of past violence and references to foster care system abuse. Please keep yourselves safe! <3
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138970
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	we're able to be just you and me (within these walls)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys! This fic is written for the Febuwhump alternate prompt: "Please come back." This is pretty sweet and not all that angsty, and I actually wrote it last night after I watched the Carnival Job. I just had Father!Eliot feelings and it somehow led to this. I have no control.
> 
> Warnings for mentions of past violence (Eliot's past) and references to foster care system abuse. Please keep your lovely selves safe! <3
> 
> With that, I really hope you like this! Kudos make my day and comments validate my existence, so please feel free to leave those, if you want :) And, as always, I hope you have a wonderful day/night! 
> 
> ~ Em

Eliot wasn’t sure how Hardison and Parker had ended up at his place, watching a bad movie on TV but not really paying attention, after the carnival job, but he certainly wasn’t complaining. Truthfully, the company was nice. Usually Eliot would have gone home to an empty apartment and made himself some sorry excuse for food and passed out, but with the others there, it felt a little less like a safehouse and a little more like a home. 

Eliot leaned back a little, resting his head on the back of the couch, and took another drink of his beer. On his right side, Hardison copied him, taking a sip of his own beer. Parker watched the two of them closely, her head on Eliot’s shoulder, and took a loud, noisy slurp of the hot chocolate Eliot had made for her. Eliot smiled a little. When they’d first started hanging out after jobs and outside of work, Parker had been worried that her affinity for quiet nights in rather than loud parties and her preference for hot chocolate or soda over alcohol would put Eliot & Hardison off, but in fact it was just the opposite. 

Parker set her mug of hot chocolate on the coffee table, snuggling closer to Eliot. Eliot moved a little, opening his arms for her to maneuver wherever she wanted to. As Parker got comfy, Eliot couldn’t help but think of how _odd_ it all was. None of them particularly enjoyed touching other people. Hardison would hug and kiss, but that was it; Parker had always had a hard time touching people, and Eliot was, well, Eliot. And yet, whenever the three of them were together, it was like all of their normal shields and defenses just flew out the window. 

That wasn’t to say that they didn’t have issues sometimes; after a particularly tough job, Parker would run away and disappear for whole nights at a time if anyone tried to touch her, Eliot and Hardison included. They didn’t mind. Sometimes they didn’t want to be touched, either, and Parker was good about respecting their boundaries just like they respected hers. They had a system, and they understood each other better than most.

Still, if someone had told Eliot that he would have _Parker_ \- the same Parker who had stabbed someone with a fork once for touching her - on one side and Alec ‘there’s a reason I stay inside’ Hardison on the other, he would have told them they were crazy. It half _felt_ crazy, what they were doing, but Eliot didn’t care. He wouldn’t change it for the world. 

“Hey,” Hardison said from beside him, drawing Eliot’s and Parker’s attention even though it was clear he was only talking to Eliot. “You were pretty good back there, with Molly.”

Eliot grunted to show he’d heard him and made a gesture with his hands for Hardison to get to the point. 

“You ever thought about it?” Hardison asked, regarding Eliot with curiosity. “Havin’ kids?”

Eliot choked on his beer, coughing a little. Parker patted him on the back until he recovered. His voice was gruff when he answered Hardison, “No! The hell would I ever wanna do that for?”

“I don’t know,” Hardison shrugged. “It was just a thought. Why you so against it, anyway?” He gave Eliot’s shoulder a little nudge. “You’d make a good dad, y’know.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Eliot growled. “Can you ever see me doin’ that, Hardison? Goin’ to their soccer games, cheerin’ from the stands, complainin’ to the school when they don’t treat her right? Huh? ‘Cause I sure can’t.”

“I can see you beating up the school people when they don’t treat her right,” Parker put in helpfully. Hardison gave her a thumbs-up behind Eliot’s back. 

Eliot shook his head, taking another sip of his beer. “Nah. That ain’t for me. That kinda stuff is for normal folk, not...me.” 

“Uh, Eliot, I hate to break this to you, but you _are_ normal,” Hardison remarked. “Just a little rough ‘round the edges is all.”

“Oh, yeah?” Eliot growled, standing up. He set his beer down so hard that the table rattled, and he lifted a corner of his shirt to expose his hip to the other two still sitting on the couch. “You call this normal, Hardison?” He gestured to a thick scar running the length of his hip, disappearing into the waistband of his pants. He remembered when he’d gotten that scar. It was from one of the last jobs he’d ever worked with Moreau. The fight had been nasty, but Eliot’s victory had been even nastier. 

“Man, that don’t mean anything,” Hardison said, standing up and placing one hand on Eliot’s shoulder. “So you got a couple battle scars, big deal. Your kids would think they’re cool.” 

“Yeah, well, they’re not _cool_ , Hardison, they’re times I almost died!” Eliot snapped. He shook his head again, letting the shirt fall back into place and resisting the urge to cross his arms defensively in front of the others. “I ain’t gonna have a child, Hardison, because I ain’t gonna make a child pray to some God that isn’t there, sayin’ “Please come back!”. I can’t put a child through that. It’s cruel.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Parker remarked, standing to join Eliot and Hardison. “But you’d be a much better dad than some of the dads out there.” Her eyes had that haunted look in them again, and Eliot knew she was remembering her time in foster care. 

“Parker’s right,” Hardison said softly. “You’d be a hell of a lot better for a kid than some scumbag who don’t deserve to be a father.” 

Eliot chuckled, smiling a little. “Yeah, maybe.” He shrugged, squeezing Parker’s arm and Hardison’s bicep where they rested on his shoulders. “In any case, it don’t matter. That’s never gonna happen.”

“You don’t know that,” Hardison protested. “It could happen tomorrow for all you know!”

Eliot raised an eyebrow. “You sayin’ I don’t know how to pull out?”

“ _No_ , man, that’s not what I’m sayin’,” Hardison replied, sounding exasperated. “I’m sayin’ you don’t _know_ , Eliot. You never know what’ll happen.”

“Yeah, well, I think that’s somethin’ I can be pretty damn sure about,” Eliot responded, closing his eyes for a minute. He sighed, raking a hand over his face once before opening them again. “What’s all this about, anyway? Why you askin’ me all this?” 

Hardison shrugged, suddenly quiet, and Eliot was left to wonder if he’d missed something important. Parker looked content, or at the very least like she knew what was going on, so Eliot must be the only one out of the loop. Eliot frowned. He hated not knowing what was going on. It was his _job_ to know. Or, at the very least, it was his job to improvise when he didn’t.

“C’mon, tell me,” he implored, giving them both a look that said he might just go crazy if they didn’t. “I don’t got a clue what you’re talkin’ about.”

Hardison laughed at that, exchanging a glance with Parker behind Eliot’s back. “Think real hard, Eliot, and I bet it’ll come to you.”

Eliot shook his head, his eyes wide. He didn’t understand. Why the hell would Hardison and Parker care if he wanted to have kids or not? It shouldn’t matter to them, it’s not like they would be raising them together…

 _Oh_. 

“You wanna raise kids with me?” Eliot asked, his voice impossibly soft. To his surprise, it was Parker who answered him. 

“Yeah, silly,” she replied, as though she’d been waiting ages for him to realise. “Me and Hardison were talking about it earlier.”

“You, you were talkin’ about _me?_ About raisin’ kids with me? As in, _with me_ with me?” Eliot couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. 

Parker shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be like that, not if we don’t want it to be.”

Eliot raised an eyebrow at her, bewildered. “What the hell are you on about, Parker?”

“Have you ever heard of a QPR?” Hardison jumped in. Eliot shook his head. “It stands for queer platonic relationship,” Hardison said, over-enunciating the words until Eliot gave him a glare and he smiled sheepishly and stopped. “It basically means we don’t gotta be, y’know, like _that_. We can just be _us_.” 

It should’ve been confusing. It should’ve made Eliot question them, question _this_ , even more. But for some reason, it didn’t and it wasn’t. It made perfect sense. They weren’t like other people. Hardison could say he was normal all he wanted, but Eliot would never be _normal_. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be, either. As Parker had once said to him, hanging from the spire of a tall building in her new harness, normal was boring. 

They weren’t normal. They were just... _them_. And maybe that was enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Stalk me on Tumblr](https://moonlight-breeze-44.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Prompts are open!
> 
> Want to scream about Leverage with other fans? [Join the multifandom Discord server](https://discord.gg/82pvdE39fD) I run with my friends! We welcome everyone, and we would love to have you. <3


End file.
